“Your Comment Contains Profanity” (Paul Thompson)

Paul Thompson blogs at the Bridge. Unfortunately, evidently he also needs his mouth washed out with soap!

The childhood fear of having my mouth washed out with soap haunted me this evening as I was responding to some push back from mycolumn this morning in the Times-News.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to write a regular column for the Times News. They are kind to publish my 500-700 word column in a rotation with 5 others in the Magic Valley. Today’s post generated a small amount of discussion via www.magicvalley.com (the online version of the Times-News).

In my attempt to dialog with some of those commenting, my original reply was rejected with this statement: “Your comment cannot be accepted due to the presence of profanity, please remove any objectionable content from your comment and try again”.

At first I thought, ‘wait! what?’ I looked at my comment again and again and could not figure it out. I thought the word “sin” or “sinner” was the problem so I substituted the phrase “offend” or “offend God”. It still got rejected. Then I began to fear that my mom might see this and the taste of soap in my mouth washed over me.

This is my original attempt, can you find the profanity?

[Reader], my column today was to the church at large. The reality of it all is that all have sinned and have fallen short of perfection. That reality leaves me humbled and thankful for a Redeemer. I’m happy to tell all who want to hear what it takes to redeem a sinner like me. You are not forced to listen or agree. I’ll hope you’ll look at that work of the cross again. See your sin? I saw mine. I owned it and its cost was death. Cry out to God for forgiveness. Rise up a new creature in Christ as you turn from your sin.

Well, you folks should see the info from Houston where the city has requested every pastor to supply his sermons to check for anti-gay stuff, compliments, apparently, of the Lesbian mayor. O yes, and the toilets, so it seems, will be open to all, male and/or female.

Double check those details. They have not requested the sermons of every pastor to check for anti-gay stuff, etc. They have subpoenaed the sermons of a small group of pastors. The subpoena was filed during the discovery phase of a lawsuit related to a petition for a referendum. This does not strike me as an issue of religious liberty; I imagine lawyers subpoena all sorts of information when preparing for a case. Because this particular lawsuit involves homosexuality, it is not hard to understand why lawyers would consider their sermons relevant.

Dear Chris: I live about a 50 minute drive down the road from where at least one of my ancestors fought in the American Revolution. I hardly he would have approved of such a political evil, where there is no crime of a serious nature. I had many other relatives in that war, and my knowledge of that war suggests that the ministers were respected. Now you know as well as I do that the ministers, be they many or few, who preached against the sin of sodomy were doing the will of God, and the mayor and those of her persuasion are using the means of government to punish preachers for their audacity. I assume you would be of the same persuasion. Tell me, how you would feel, if a deputy knocked on your door in the morning with a summons to appear in court for speaking out against an evil that the Bible enjoins upon you? Consider this: Down the road, they will do worse. I have some idea of what that might involve. Do you?

Tarheel, I surely do. I was merely speaking generally, but I know that it was done by subpoena. To me that is a clear violation of the first amendment. Don’t get all bent out of shape. Chris thought I needed to know that it was not all but only some of the ministers. So what? The subpoena of one is enough for a descendant of the Sons of Liberty to get up and call for his musket or, at least, his lawyer, if he can trust him to be pro constitution.

As I reiterate in a comment that has yet to be approved, the subpoena is in response to a lawsuit initiated by the pastors themselves. The pastors started the lawsuit, they should expect information will be requested by the defending lawyers.

Sorry, Ben, I overstated my case. Should have said, the ministers involved in the petition effort. Even so the net effect is the same. If you can get one or a few, then you can, later, go after the rest, ignoring the constitution. Soon we shall see that the folks who are really in power (they are behind the scenes, not out front) intend to take away that constitution, one way or another.

Duh! This is the dumbest discussion in which I have ever taken part. Obviously, there is no profanity in the comments – anywhere. Someone evidently has an intention that is going to preclude the Gospel. Recommend that the paper be quizzed for what they regard as profanity…while having your religious liberty lawyer handy.

Thanks, David Miller, for the link to the paper in Houston. Looks more and more like them folks are about the business of suppressing religious liberty, especially when it involves speaking out against the evils of sodomy, etc. I never cease to marvel that I live down the road about a 50 minute drive, where one of my ancestors fought for religious liberty (and that is just one, the only one at this point that I can trace to the big event for liberty, and I never think of the Revolution but what I think of the Liberty Bell and its text, Lev.25:19, as the true symbol of that struggle and not the Statute of Liberty), and I did not even know that when I came to this state. That ancestor was not the only one, but the means for establishing the others is not as clear as in his case. There were other relatives, even one whole regiment of Virginia Militia in which ever member bore the same last name as my maternal grandmother (her maiden name). In any case, we who think there is a conspiracy will, very likely, be confirmed, when everyone sees how the folks that run things implement the practices they desire and the Christian legacy of this nature be damned (by them). Read Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope for starters and then Cleon Skousen’s The Naked Capitalist, Bella Dodd’s School of Darkness, and many other volumes. Ever notice how the district courts make such terrible decisions. And did you know that the charge for seeking to deny one of one’s constitutional rights, the last time I had an account of it, is 5-7 years in prison along with something like an eighty thousand dollar fine, either one or both (but don’t hold me to the 80,000 fine. my memory is not firm on that). You fellows need to appoint prayer groups to pray for the recovery of our land, people who will hang in their and pray and organize and vote until the cows come home to roost. If you don’t then we will have opportunity to fellowship in concentration camps like in the old USSR and China, etc. Trouble is you won’t care for the accommodations and the treatment then; it might distract you from your prayers or add some real fervor to them.